BasiliskWrangler wrote:Hmm, we have no plans to produce a hint guide for Book I, but the forums are always open!

Maybe we should have a special topic just for hints and spoilers, so people who are just looking to know more about the game don't accidentally stumble upon spoilers?

The Ultima hint books were some of the best ever done. Especially those for Ultimas 6 and 7. Both introduced narrative from one or more characters, each of which had a different way of presenting information.

The Avernum hint books are good too. They have the big map of the game, and a brief essay on the main quests of the game and how to pursue them, and then a long list of FAQ style questions like "How do I get here?" or "Where do I find this?" and you can use that for quick easy answers.

What form you would want your own hint book to take is entirely up to you. But take some inspiration from the greats of the past... modern hint books are like tactical reviews.... BOR-RING....

BasiliskWrangler wrote:Hey, what are those Spiderweb manuals like? How many pages are they? Are they fully illustrated? Are they designed to supplement the storyline, or provide technical reference to the RPG rule set?

Gee.. I wonder of there is a bar you are measuring yourself against.

Seriously, I've felt that Jeff's games could benefit from some technical updating, but he seems a bit reluctant to mess with what has worked so well so far. (But then I make games and the technology for them for a living, so I am a wee bit biased).

Just my 2 cents, it seems most RPGs have a hintbook/walkthrough. I'd prefer a spiderweb style hintbook rather than the modern walkthrough. It's an opportunity for the dev to enhance their profit while increasing the enjoyment of a lot of the player base. I really enjoy the Spiderweb hintbooks and the hintbooks/player guides of the days of old. Make it so Basilisk, make it so.

I'm a bit disappointed in spiderweb lately.
Their games are great, back in the day i lived off the exile series.
But now the graphics are still geneforge-esque, and im getting bored of it.
For some reason, i would prefer tiny pixel graphics to the horribly made attempt-at-3D spiderweb is doing now.

I personally loved the way the Ultima games did the hint books. They were real "Hint" books and not walkthrough's that gave you answers. They would introduce lore on the towns and people as well that was a ton of fun to read. Please do something like that!

I got the hint book for avernum 1 I think and didnt much care for it, wasn't really any lore, just answers to how to solve things.

Ameefmu wrote:I'm a bit disappointed in spiderweb lately.
Their games are great, back in the day i lived off the exile series.
But now the graphics are still geneforge-esque, and im getting bored of it.
For some reason, i would prefer tiny pixel graphics to the horribly made attempt-at-3D spiderweb is doing now.

This is my first post and all, Hello

I agree. I've played all of Spiderweb's games back to Exile I...I REALLY wish he'd stuck with the original Avernum engine, and not switched to the Geneforge engine for the two most recent games. I really don't like the new in-game character icons, and gameplay is frustrating at times.

[quote="macdude22"]I'm a HUGE fan of the Spiderweb games as you can see, going back to Exile. I'm slowly wading my way through them again, but I've delved into 5 for the time being, the story is real solid and I was one of the ones that didn't mind the engine change so much. Granted I really did like the old one. A5 disk should arrive shortly. It would appear my cat is a Spiderweb fan as well.